news from San Remo, as well. Stefan’s emigration to London was snarled in bureaucracy – it seemed that it had become harder to leave Italy. And then there was Baudelaire.
It was Adorno who wrote to him after a rather suspicious delay, a long, cautious, carefully worded letter expressing the opinion that Benjamin would have to reconsider the structure of the essay. It didn’t work – didn’t work at all. He’d imposed an ‘ascetic discipline’ on himself by ‘omitting everywhere conclusive theoretical answers’, he’d hurt himself trying to give a nod to Marxism, denying space to the most courageous and fruitful thoughts with a kind of preventive self-censure inspired by mat-erialistic categories. ‘If one wanted to put rather drastically, one could say that your study is located at the crossroads of magic and positivism.’
It was a devastating blow and he was hurled into a deep depression. Born under the melancholic sign of Saturn, Benjamin would often even renounce eating, staying for hours and hours in bed, ruminating on his misfortunes and cursing the hunchbacked dwarf from the nursery rhymes who never left him alone. He forced himself to respond to Adorno and hash through his agreements and disagreements concerning Baudelaire. He decided to seriously pursue becoming a naturalised French citizen. He went about it, as he said, ‘with discernment, but without illusions’. He would write, ‘If before the only uncertainty was hesitation, now even the utility of this process has become problematic. The collapse of human rights in Europe makes legalisation of any description effectively illusory.’ Benjamin was among the few German émigrés who recognised this. And as always, his ability to understand the state of the world didn’t help resolve practical matters. Despite the help of Paul Valéry and Jules Romains, Benjamin never did obtain French citizenship.And yet in that enormously difficult predicament in which staying in Paris at all was a deadly gamble, did he ever really consider leaving the country? His ex-wife Dora, who came to visit at the end of December, couldn’t even convince him. Stefan’s problems meanwhile had been remedied and now mother and son were moving to England.
Dora had been an extraordinarily beautiful woman and hadn’t lost any of her charm as she grew older. She still had the energy and determination to face life that she always had. While the man she had been married to seemed to find pleasure in every delay, and felt perfectly comfortable with every indecision, it was profoundly irritating to her by now. Though she couldn’t help but worry about him.
‘You can’t stay here,’ she announced harshly one evening. They were in a café on Montmartre, two cups of steaming tea on the table between them. An icy wind blew scattered pages of an old newspaper down the street, the Christmas decorations strung between two buildings shook. ‘Why don’t you come to London with us? We’ll put you up for a while. You would certainly find something to do . . .’
Her offer might have been laced with pity and Benjamin very well may have felt that lace wrap him up. He grew aggravated.
‘Let’s not speak of it,’ he sharply answered. ‘Let’s not talk about it again. The only place I can work is in Paris.’
He stood, put on his coat, the same coat he’d worn through the last seven winters, and then he leaned down and stroked her face, pushed his fingers into her hair. She leaned against his hand, squeezing it between her cheek and her shoulder. Walter stood for a while looking at her.
‘Bon voyage,’ he finally said. ‘Tell Stefan to forgive me if he can.’
Back on the street, he dug his hands into his pockets and walked with his eyes on the ground. As he headed up the steep pavement, he could feel the cold air on his teeth and his heart struggling to beat.
Chapter Thirteen
That evening Mariano told us to pitch the tents under the almond trees in a field near Falset. There were sixteen of us again, because they’d assigned us three new men: Jacque was French and had a pointy nose and pomade in his hair, Luigi was an Italian communist who instantly hated Alfonso for belonging to a different party. And then there was Sepúlveda – I never did learn his first name. He was CNT – anarchist union – from Maros, a little village in the province of Jaén. What a character: dark, hairy, outspoken, he ate priests for lunch. Just think, every morning he’d wake up and run down into the town to piss.Where? Against the church – the prelate would chase and curse him for centuries and he’d yell right back, ‘Homo! Go kiss a rich person’s ass! Parasite!’ We’d try to make a point of going to see the show before starting our exercises on the hill.We hunted rabbits in the afternoon. There were thousands of them and we ate a lot, and traded others with farmers for fruit, onions and tomatoes. I couldn’t say how long we were there.War’s like that.You live in the day and you don’t have much use for calendars. Until the moment when you’re forced to wrestle time again. That happened the day we saw the disinfection truck parked in the village square. They distributed the new uniforms. The day of the attack was getting closer.
The next day, July 24, I remember it well, we were heading up the road running alongside the Ebro. It was almost dark when we settled into a cane field south of Mora near Miravet. The order to cross the river came down at midnight. This time we were serious; we were attacking en masse. There were a hundred thousand men covering a ten-kilometre-long front. Our mission was to push through their lines, get on the road to Saragozza and cut the Moroccans off as they were retreating. Alfonso could barely stay in his skin. He was the one who had to carry the ropes over the river so that we could cross and mark the route for the boats coming in with the rest of our troops. It was a dark, moonless night.
‘I can’t see shit,’ he said and jumped in. Fifteen minutes later we got the signal. He’d tied the thick rope around a fig tree on the other shore and was waiting for us. The water was high, but not too cold.While the 11th division was transferring boats, we got out of our wetsuits and put on Franco’s uniforms. The others were getting into position as we left and headed west toward Corbera.
‘Forward march,’ ordered Mariano. ‘And I’ll shoot the first person who talks.’
An hour later we were in our positions, grenades and machine guns ready in ditches by the side of the road. We were near a river. Orders were to shoot on sight anyone who tried to pass. It would be impossible to make any mistakes, our men would head north from the Ebro; the only people passing over our bridge would be enemies retreating. And they came. In groups and then in waves. We took them by surprise and sent them back in the same direction they came from. Pale, ragged, scattered: Guardia Civil, the Tercio de Extranjeros, Requetés, Italians and the Regulares. The only ones we had mercy on were the conscripted men, the Spanish, everyone else . . .Alfonso worked them over with the grenades and Lech the Pole mowed them down with the machine gun.
‘A hundred and eighteen, a hundred and twenty-five, a hundred and forty-six,’ he counted.
You couldn’t tell how he managed to count in the middle of all that smoke and the darkest dark.
‘What in the hell are you counting, you ass?’ yelled Sepúlveda.
‘That’s enough,’ said Mariano. ‘We have to get to the gates of Corbera now.’
We marched through the night Indian file, until dawn, and then we started seeing the houses of the village in the distance. There was a wet, humid haze hanging over the road. A motorcycle sentry arrived and told us that the orders were to take Corbera.
‘How? There are only sixteen of us,’ Luigi protested.
‘You’re a lowly turd, that’s what you are,’ said Alfonso.
We had to force the two Italians apart – and we barely managed. Luckily Mariano intervened, his fingers in his hair, his eye steely.
